Q. Why do onions make us cry when we cut them?
A. Chopping onions unleashes a “chemical defense that onion plants have to protect themselves against insects and microbes, ” said UW-Madison horticulture professor Irwin Goldman. We ‘re just innocent bystanders, it seems.
The 68th Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference was held in Madison last week, drawing more than 1,200 fish and wildlife professionals from Midwestern states to hear reports on recent research and management experiences.
….John Magnuson, emeritus professor in the Center for Limnology at UW-Madison, gave a keynote address followed by presentations on how climate change is affecting natural resources. Magnuson made the point that people see and know how to deal with short-timeline problems and solutions, but something that changes in terms of decades is much more difficult to realize and to deal with.
(Also included in this article is Chris Kucharik of the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.)
A fierce moral debateâ??whether the therapeutic potential of stem cells could justify destroying embryos to get themâ??appeared to vanish when scientists in Wisconsin and Japan announced that they had figured out how to convert adult skin cells into near-perfect copies of the wonder cells. More research remains to be done, but this might be the most delightful discovery since common bread mold birthed the age of antibiotics.
The biggest biomedical breakthrough of 2007 was the transformation of adult skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells by adding only four genes. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University ignited this revolution first by himself using mice cells, then later in the year in competing papers with Dr. James Thomson of University of Wisconsin in human cells.
Until these results, embryonic stem cells – which have the potential to become any cell in the body – could only be generated by destroying either eggs or embryos. The research holds the promise of eliminating the ethical minefield that has so hampered what many scientists see as the great potential for stem cells to treat all sorts of diseases, including Parkinson’s, diabetes and spinal cord injury.
Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the findings dovetail with his own work on emotion and the brainâ??s structure and function. While studies have long shown that negative emotions, such as anxiety and fear, can interfere with learning, Mr. Davidson, who was named one of the worldâ??s most influential people by Time magazine in 2006, has documented that in people who undergo regular training in meditation or other practices akin to social and emotional learning, the brain circuitry actually changes.
Sometimes the rights to use university technology are granted to major corporations or other established companies.
Though that might not be the ultimate aim, it can be a lucrative practice generating millions of dollars for universities.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, received $43.5 million in 2006 licensing income. The University of Wisconsin received $42.3 million. The University of California system received more than $193 million.
During the 2000 presidential election, the Republican and Democratic parties paid for 50% of advertising in the 70 largest cities, according to a study by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin. In 2004, that figure fell to 17%. Outside groups accounted for 20% of the advertisements in the 2004 presidential campaign, double the amount of 2000, according to the project.
CHICAGO (AFP) â?? It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realized. Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
Then just earlier this month a different team announced it had cured sickle cell anemia in mice using stem cells derived from adult mouse skin.
Deltanoid Pharmaceuticals â?? the company formed by UW-Madison vitamin D expert Hector DeLuca to bring 2-MD, a bone-building drug, to market â?? is plunging ahead with two new drug compounds, thanks to a hefty infusion of cash.
Scientists and others close to Wisconsin’s research sector often use the term “public-private partnership” to describe a nirvana of converging interests: the power of a public research university paired with the flexibility and rapid response of private collaborators, says a column by Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council.
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all, says a column by UW-Madison professor James Thomson and Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science
Phil Fisette is a scientist who’s creating art by offering customers a colorful photograph of their own DNA.
Fisette, 37, who has a doctorate in cell and molecular biology from UW-Madison, became intrigued by the beauty of the microscopic world. He started his company, Cell Portraits, in June.
An important new study by University of Wisconsin economist John Karl Scholz, provides a chilling perspective on the real human costs of this oversight. With the after-tax return for working so low, it should be little surprise that many individuals simply choose not to get a job.
St. Paul, Minn. â?? Human beings are evolving at an ever faster rate, according to a new study.
A group of anthropologists and geneticists tracked this change by looking a relatively new gene for digesting milk, which varies depending on where in the world you live.
Guest John Hawks, anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was part of a team that analyzed DNA sequences and skeletons to determine the pace of human evolution. He writes a blog on paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution.
Douglas N. Harris, a professor of policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, took a different tack. Looking across occupations, he said, cognitive ability is the best predictor of worker effectiveness, especially in complex occupations such as teaching. Nonetheless, a recent study of his own failed to find a relationship between teachersâ?? college-entrance-exam scores and their ability to produce state test-score gains by their students.
Pay me now, and pay me later.
Thatâ??s the new mind-set at some leading research universities in dealing with business â?? and the essence of an emerging model for how corporations can tap big brains on campus without having to pay their salaries.
Corporations have long been able to license intellectual property from universities, but these deals are cumbersome to negotiate and tend to work best when corporate researchers know exactly what they need to create.
Brookfield – He’s the pride of the Packers, Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year, and a nearly unavoidable celebrity.
On Thursday, Brett Favre’s image even joined the effort to build support for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and its ambitions to expand as a catalyst of research, technology innovation and risk-friendly start-up companies.
In a show of support, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley drove in from Madison to attend the event at the Brookfield Suites Hotel and Convention Center.
Milwaukee cannot thrive without a research complex, Wiley said. UWM needs to expand “as fast as possible, to be the biggest and best research university that it possibly can be,” Wiley said.
Favre is the epitome of the “thoughtful risk taker,” said Colin Scanes, UWM’s vice chancellor for research and economic development.
The University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks canâ??t figure out why deCODEâ??s CEO publicized the companyâ??s analysis of James Watsonâ??s DNA. The analysis showed, in the words of the New York Times report, that Watsonâ??s DNA â??has 16 times the number of genes considered to be of African origin than the average white European does â?? about the same amount of African DNA that would show up if one great-grandparent were African, said Kari Stefansson, the chief executive of deCODE Genetics of Iceland, which did the analysis.â?
Terry Devitt, a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin at Madisonâ??s research programs, said he saw no evidence that his school could not compete with the Ivies, citing the universityâ??s top-10 ranking as a recipient of federal funds for scientific research.
â??Take a look at the numbers,â? Devitt said. â??This is a first-class institution and is the equal or superior of Harvard in many areas.â?
University of Wisconsin at Madison ranked second in total research and development expenditures in 2006, while Harvard did not break the top 25, according to the National Science Foundation. Only four of the top 10 institutions listed were private.
Research conducted by a University of Wisconsin professor found human evolution has advanced faster in the past 40,000 years than ever before.
Q. Why does the Mississippi River flow south?
Submitted by Eryn Bain, 7th grade,
Cherokee Middle School
A. A river’s path is primarily determined by the shape of the land, says Jim Knox, a UW-Madison geography professor who studies rivers.
South Korean officials trying to rebuild stem-cell research in their country after a scandal involving a top scientist are turning to top U.S. researchers for guidance.
WASHINGTON – Science fiction writers have suggested a future Earth populated by a blend of all races into a common human form. In real life, the reverse seems to be happening. People are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another, researchers say.
“Our species is not static,” Harpending added in a telephone interview.
South Korean officials trying to rebuild stem cell research in their country after a scandal involving a top scientist are turning to leading U.S. researchers for guidance.
A delegation of South Korean scientists and government officials spent two days at the National Stem Cell Bank here to learn best practices in the growth and distribution of stem cells.
A study led by a UW-Madison anthropologist has found that human evolutionary change, driven by huge population growth and cultural shifts, has moved much faster in the past 40,000 years than formerly believed, and even faster in the last 10,000 years.
The findings by a team led by University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks are making headlines around the world. They counter a common theory that human evolution slowed to a crawl in modern humans, who had conquered nature, were living longer and had an easier life.
Quoted: anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison.
NATURE’S race to create the perfect person has shifted into top gear, with humans evolving 100 times faster than at any time since the rise of man some 6 million years ago.
That is the finding of researchers who have sifted through data collected by the international effort to map our genetic blueprint.
The pace of human evolution in the past 5000 years was “immense â?¦ something nobody expected”, John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist, said yesterday.
Modern medicine and social safety nets haven’t slowed human evolution; instead, thanks to changes in diet, climate and lifestyle, evolution appears to be speeding up, and it’s happening in different ways in different groups of people.
So said a team of U.S. anthropologists earlier this week. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, received widespread press coverage — some of it responsible, and some less so.
We can all agree that Wisconsin is a great place to live, work and raise a family. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t be here.
We would also agree Wisconsin and Minnesota have many similarities. Both states have a similar climate, and roughly the same population. The residents of both states also have a strong Midwestern work ethic.
But Minnesota outperforms Wisconsin in a few key areas.
Third Wave Technologies, 502 S. Rosa Road, has secured a five-year, $25 million line of credit with Deerfield Management, a health-care investment fund based in New York.
By tracking the footprints of evolution along the human genome, a team of researchers on Monday reported for the first time that the pace of evolution is quickening with the passing generations.
Lead author is John Hawks, Depts. of Anthropology and Zoology
Thirteen nano-level university laboratories across the country are hiring themselves out to businesses eager to make their mark in the millennium of the minuscule. The intimidatingly named National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, begun in 2004, is funded in part with $14 million a year from the National Science Foundation.
Participating business owners say the network allows them to do much more research than they would have without access to its resources. That research, to which the businesses retain all rights, will foster better products and industrial processes that will bolster the national economy, they say.
….Respect for his many accomplishments, as well as a recognition of his missteps, should guide members of the UW Board of Regents as they seek a successor….
Wiley’s achievements are significant. Under his leadership, the university has expanded its role as a center of research and scientific advancement that has few public or private rivals.
….For the UW to maintain its greatness, the school must be more closely linked to Madison and Wisconsin. With the straining of that relationship, the commitment of the state to providing the public funding that is needed to keep the UW strong and independent has slackened.
John Wiley has been an able administrator in many significant senses. But the next chancellor must take a broader view of the UW’s mission and its need to reconnect with Wisconsin.
â??I thought, we canâ??t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.â?
After years of searching, and at times almost giving up in despair, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka may have found that alternative. Last month, his was one of two groups of researchers that independently announced they had successfully turned adult skin cells into the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells without using an actual embryo. The other group was led by James A. Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, one of the first scientists to isolate human embryonic stem cells.
The world may feel more and more like a global village, but its residents are increasingly genetically diverse thanks to the rapidly accelerating pace of human evolution, a study said Monday. John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, collaborated on the study
Looking back at seven sometimes stormy years in the top post at UW-Madison, Chancellor John Wiley said that the best parts of the experience — and the worst — involved personnel matters.
The good part was finding highly qualified people for key jobs. “We have the best collection of deans this campus has ever had,” Wiley said during a press conference Friday at the Chazen Museum of Art, where he announced that he would leave the chancellor’s post in September 2008.
But the worst parts of the personnel process were not the highly publicized incidents in which felons were found to be working at the university, or the criticism of his placing Vice Chancellor Paul Barrows on a lengthy sick leave after allegations of sexual harassment were made against Barrows.
In the fall of 1984, Robert Enright sat at his desk behind a stack of books, lost in uneasy thought. Why am I doing what I’m doing?
He had spent almost a decade studying how children view justice, publishing dozens of papers. The subject was to be his life’s work. Now, on sabbatical from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was plowing through the books, the fruits of a century of progress in his field.
Jim Bockheim, a UW-Madison soil scientist, has spent a lot of time in Antarctica. If you need proof of that, just check a map of this remote land at the bottom of the world.
Look for Mount Bockheim.
John Wiley was a scientist before he became a college administrator. And in the years after his departure from the UW-Madison chancellor ‘s job, the university ‘s reputation throughout the world as a leading research institution is likely to become his most lasting legacy, researchers and administrators said.
Mentions that laboratories at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are getting rolling on scientific research to more easily break down the sugars in cornstalks and other plants. Earlier this year, UW received a $125 million award to establish its first federal research center in nearly a century, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center.
University of Wisconsin researchers have successfully used human embryonic stem cells to diagnose diseases and predict the effects of certain drugs in the human body.
Sugar may now be OK to put in your gas tank.
In a Gilson Discovery evening seminar Thursday, president and CEO of Virent Energy Systems Eric Apfelbach presented current developments in converting biomass, including sugarcane, into hydrocarbon fuels, providing renewable energy as a replacement for oil products.
Last month, after UW-Madison and Kyoto University researchers announced a new technique that turns skin cells into cells that look and function like embryonic stem cells, the world seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. At last, the end to the nearly decade-long stem cell war was in sight. Or, so it seemed.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) â?? The National Stem Cell Bank here might soon get bigger.
The bank already houses and distributes most of the stem cells available for federally funded research, and its leaders hope to add cells created with a new technique that does not involve the destruction of embryos.
The National Institutes of Health created the bank in Madison in 2005 as the central repository for federally approved embryonic stem cells. It is operated by the WiCell Research Institute, a nonprofit connected to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For the first time, scientists have used human embryonic stem cells to predict the toxic effects of drugs and provide chemical clues to diagnosing disease.
Writing this week in the journal Stem Cells and Development, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison biologist Gabriela Cezar reports the use of all-purpose stem cells to elicit and identify the telltale chemical signals secreted by the cells when exposed to a drug known to cause autism.
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all. Being able to reprogram skin cells into multipurpose stem cells without harming embryos launches an exciting new line of research. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re at square one, uncertain at this early stage whether souped-up skin cells hold the same promise as their embryonic cousins do.
Far from vindicating the current U.S. policy of withholding federal funds from many of those working to develop potentially lifesaving embryonic stem cells, recent papers in the journals Science and Cell described a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions. In fact, work by both the U.S. and Japanese teams that reprogrammed skin cells depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation selected a new foundation director of investments, the foundation announced Wednesday.
There was a lot of discussion last month about a scientific breakthrough that made stem cell research possible without running afoul of the Bush Administrationâ??s restrictions on destroying embryos. Bizarrely, admirers of President Bush claimed that he deserved credit for stimulating the latest advance.
That fanciful claim has now been effectively skewered by the American scientist who led one of the teams that accomplished the breakthrough.
Q. Is it true that the death rate increases around the holidays?
A. Christmas Day, Dec. 26 and New Year’s Day are the deadliest days of the year, says Patrick Remington, professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison. Nationwide, the mortality rate is about 5 percent higher on these days.
Itâ??s no secret that thereâ??s an obesity epidemic going on. Many researchers blame highly processed carbohydrates, such as high-fructose corn syrup and white flour. Now scientists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison have started to tease out the role of the liver in converting those calorie-rich foods into fat. The researchers isolated a gene in the liver called SCD-1. The gene codes for an enzyme that synthesizes fatty acids. Mice with the normal gene were fed a diet high in processed carbs. The mice converted those carbs into fat and stored that fat in the body. But mice that lacked that SCD-1 gene just burned all those carb calories. And stayed skinny.
This finding reveals that the liver determines whether or not eating refined carbohydrates will lead to fat gain. The researchers say this system is a good example of a direct diet-gene interaction. But they also say that a drug to turn off that fat-making liver gene wouldnâ??t be a good idea. Without that gene, the mice could no longer make glucose. They ended up hypoglycemicâ??suffering from low blood sugar. So the solution is, sadly, what you already knew: eat fewer processed carbohydrates.
A national watchdog group that opposes animal research accused the Wisconsin Primate Research Center of â??wasting tens of millions in federal tax grantsâ? Tuesday.
Switching off one key gene in the liver can virtually halt the conversion of carbohydrates into body fat, a U.S. study suggests.
While the SCD-1 gene exists in every cell in the body, the University of Wisconsin research says its specific actions in the liver are essential for the production of body fat from high carbohydrate intakes â?? a primary source of the obesity epidemic sweeping the globe.
“I would say it is a switch-off gene,” says James Ntambi, a biochemist at the Madison school and the lead author of the study in mice.
Johns Hopkins University spent more on science, engineering and medical research in 2006 than any other U.S. academic institution, according to rankings released yesterday by the National Science Foundation.
Hopkins spent nearly $1.5 billion on research last year – nearly twice much as the runner-up, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which spent $830 million.
To protect against rabies, dogs are given shots every one to three years, depending on such factors as their age and the type of vaccine used.
But a Maine woman who is concerned that too-frequent rabies vaccinations are exposing pets to health risks has helped raise money for a study to look at whether dogs actually need far fewer shots.
The study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine will examine whether rabies vaccinations immunize dogs to that fatal disease for as long as five to seven years.
Ever since last weekâ??s monumental breakthrough by UW-Madisonâ??s own researcher Dr. James Thomson, which turned human skin cells into stem cells without using a human embryo, people have misunderstood its significance.
In the wake of the stunning announcement by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Thomson that he and his team had succeeded in reprogramming human skin cells to create new stem cell lines, many people have begun to speculate on the effect that this breakthrough will have on the stem cell debate.
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As the parent of a child with diabetes, it is my hope that Thomson’s breakthrough will allow our nation to move forward with a national policy that increases public funding of all forms of stem cell research. I would like to believe that we will see an end to the contentious debate over this research that has caused years of delay and that too often has left researchers without adequate resources.
I am not optimistic, however.
Just as a rotten apple can spoil the bunch, so can a rotten potato. So UW-Madison researchers have developed a test that may for the first time allow growers to prevent widespread crop damage.
Using a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, Zahi Atallah, associate researcher in the department of plant pathology, developed a test that can detect as few as one spore of a number of fungal diseases that can destroy potatoes. A spore is the early stage of fungi.
Every day, countless people walk along the sidewalk in front of the Wisconsin Historical Society on the UW-Madison campus. Most are probably completely unaware of the treasures that lie just below their feet.
More than 15,000 film reels from the Golden Age of Hollywood, stored in identical flat, gray metal canisters, are stacked in row upon row of non-descript shelving in the vast temperature- and humidity-controlled vault underneath the sidewalk.
Q. Why does wood float?
Dylan Jack
Sixth grade
Cherokee Middle School
A. The simple answer is that wood is less dense than water, says UW-Madison wood products professor Scott Bowe.
A new way to trick skin cells into acting like embryos changes both everything and nothing at all. Being able to reprogram skin cells into multipurpose stem cells without harming embryos launches an exciting new line of research. It’s important to remember, though, that we’re at square one, uncertain at this early stage whether souped-up skin cells hold the same promise as their embryonic cousins do.
Far from vindicating the current U.S. policy of withholding federal funds from many of those working to develop potentially lifesaving embryonic stem cells, recent papers in the journals Science and Cell described a breakthrough achieved despite political restrictions. In fact, work by both the U.S. and Japanese teams that reprogrammed skin cells depended entirely on previous embryonic stem cell research.
